


The Shadow of the Dome

by draculard



Category: The Cellar - Richard Laymon
Genre: Asexuality, M/M, Night Terrors, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-31 02:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Maybe it's a kink in his system, but sometimes his nightmares are also wet dreams.





	The Shadow of the Dome

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken, of course, from Samuel Coleridge's Kubla Khan.

Maybe it’s a kink in his system, but sometimes his nightmares are also wet dreams.

Not always, of course. He wakes up shaking, gasping, sweating every time, but it’s only occasionally that his underwear is damp and sticky. If he had to put a number on it, he’d say five percent of the time — but Larry’s never been good with numbers, and five percent is a low enough amount that he’s more comfortable repeating his usual mantra:

It never happened. 

To Tommy, sure — he can admit it happened to Tommy. But he got only a glimpse, and all he saw was the pale, translucent flesh of the Beast, so large it seemed to swallow Tommy whole. That’s all. 

It never happened.

And he has nightmares, yes, and sometimes he wakes up screaming, too, but he never has wet dreams. He’s never been much interested in sex — and that’s not, as some people have suggested, a result of trauma. Larry is a small-town guy; he may teach English at a university, but words like ‘trauma’ and even ‘symptom’ frequently escape his vocabulary, spilling out of his head and over the floor like maggots writhing in a corpse, or blood drops leaking from a wound. 

Nightmares, he’ll admit to. A permanent glitch in his personality, an irrevocable gap in his maturity, no. 

It never happened. 

Tommy was raped, not Larry. He has never felt those sharp, curved claws curling into his back. He has never had his face smashed against the dusty floorboards, his nose snapping, blood filling his mouth and eyes. He’s never seen the Beast’s peculiar cock, never felt that strange prehensile tongue deep inside him, licking his walls with every thrust.

He’s never awoken screaming in pain and fright, still throbbing from orgasm.

He’s fine. 


End file.
